> -----Original Message----- > From: John Lange [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: July 28, 2006 12:58 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: [on-asterisk] PoE > > On Fri, 2006-07-28 at 12:32 -0400, Jim Van Meggelen wrote: > > > It puts all the sets on their very own LAN, which means > there is zero > > chance of them having to contend with any other LAN traffic. Since > > there is nothing fancy going on with either LAN, there is > no need to > > put in expensive mansged switching equipment, followed by expensive > > labour to design, deploy, test and support this new LAN. > > This is probably whats changing the most. Today any > reasonable switch will have VLAN capabilities or layer 3 QOS > and its really not complex to configure. Granted its more > complex than doing nothing but its still not that hard. And > spending a little more on a switch will protect the entire > LAN (not just the VoIP) from some virus infected device. In > my books its well worth the investment.
I think you are right, but many customers do not. Still, I am already re-thinking my opinion on these matters, and I may find myself putting more thought into trying to sell the network upgrade. Time will tell how this pans out. > > "Keep you old switches and network spagetti, we don't need to (nor > > want to) touch it, and the hardware for the voice LAN will > be about $5 per set". > > I figure upgrading the LAN would be about the same. After all > need the same number of LAN ports on the parallel network as > you need on the existing LAN so the switch cost would be the same. Nope, because it does not need to be managed or have QoS. A $100 dumb 10/100 switch will do the job with bandwidth to spare. > > One of the things you said that > > struck me was ". . . ignoring special cases and politics . . .", > > which I found ironic because those two reasons are > significant factors > > in why it can be so much trouble dealing with an existing > LAN. I would > > argue that all cases tend to be special, and politics > nearly always plays a part. > > I agree. I said ignore it because when you are going into a > situation you want to advocate the best technical solution > and let the special cases and politics beat you down from there. Interesting approach. Perhaps I am walking in with shields at maxumum, and should be taking a more assertive approach. They say "the burnt hand teaches best", but that doesn't make it true. > You run into all kinds of politics. As an example, in many > federal government offices the computers and network are > under the IT department budget but the phone system is under > the office administration budget. > That killed any further discussion of VoIP because the admin > people simply said "this is our budget and we aren't giving > it up". Not to mention the tech's weren't at all thrilled > with having yet another task assigned to them to manage. > > Sure they could save tens of thousands but neither side is > motivated to fight for VoIP so they just "upgrade" with yet > another proprietary Nortel at 3 times the cost. Probably many of the challenges of the world occur due to such things. Besides, it's not their money so why worry, eh? Thanks for the chat. Jim -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.4/402 - Release Date: 27/07/2006
